USAN, MIGUEL BRUN, Alfredo Rago, Christoph Thies, Tobias Uller, and Richard A. Watson. “Development and Selective Grain Make Plasticity ‘Take the Lead’in Adaptive Evolution.” (2021).
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Biological evolution exhibits an extraordinary capability to adapt organisms to their environments. The explanation for this often takes for granted that random genetic variation produces at least some beneficial phenotypic variation in which natural selection can act. Such genetic evolvability could itself be a product of evolution, but it is widely acknowledged that the immediate selective gains of evolvability are small on short timescales. So how do biological systems come to exhibit such extraordinary capacity to evolve? One suggestion is that adaptive phenotypic plasticity makes genetic evolution find adaptations faster. However, the need to explain the origin of adaptive plasticity puts genetic evolution back in the driving seat, and genetic evolvability remains unexplained.